The Lure of the Beemer

All right, so here's the story...

At the beginning of summer, my wife and I like to do a little camping, a little hoteling and a little visiting to start things off. After all, we are teachers, and doing a good job next years depends on making sure we completely reset our brains before we start with the next class of little angels...

We stayed with our eldest daughter in Kelowna for a few days, camped in the Rockies in Jasper for three nights in our lovely Insta-Tent, and then headed off to Calgary.

My wife's sister lives there and I hadn't actually been to the Stampede since I was four so I thought it was time.

We began by having a Stampeded breakfast. During Stampede, all over Calgary, there are free breakfasts that are open to anyone! There's pancakes, coffee, juice, sausage, entertainment - the whole shebang! The one we went to on the first day was at a car dealership. After having a great breakfast and soaking in the entertainment, my brother-in-law, Randy, suggested that we go next door to Deerfoot Motorsports to look at the bikes.

I begrudgingly agreed to tag along.

Randy has a BMW motorcycle  -  a 1200 or 1300. It's a beautiful bike. So he suggested that we take a look at the BMW scooters. Secretly, I had been perusing the maxi scooter market over the past few weeks so I was keen to at least see the offerings in real life rather than on the net. We headed upstairs in this giant dealership until we found the BMW section.

There we found the BMW scooters. There were three - two of them were new 2015 scoots - beautiful machines - for around $12,000. Ha, I thought, can't afford that. Then Randy said, "Hey, Dave, take a look at this one!"

It was a 2013 BMW C600 - a Corporate demo - with 1200 kms on it. The price? $7000! 

Apparently they had received a few of them from BMW and had 2 or 3 left. Sitting on the comfortable seat, I thought - hmmm, this might actually be possible.

I did look at the Vespa section as well and, though I thought they were great, too, there was something about that BMW that was a bit special.  

We then headed to the Stampede but all I could think of was that scooter. How could we manage it? Well, if I sold the Vespa..... Finally, after discussions with my banker (aka my wife), I decided, what the heck, I'm gonna buy that thing! 

When we organized the actual test drive that afternoon, it was on one of the other BMW scooters - a silver one. Once I saw that, I liked it even more! I followed the test drive guy from the dealership and was really quite impressed by the performance of the scooter. It's heavier and wider than my Vespa 250 but has gobs more power! Very nice ride! It's got a host of features that I have never seen on my Vespa - heated seats and grips, tire pressure sensor, trip computer, oil sensor, the list goes on. It really seems that a lot of thought has gone into this machine.

There really wasn't much room to quibble but I ended up with a discount on a new helmet (a Schulberth - expensive but comfortable) and some gloves (and no provincial sales tax) and Randy came with his trusty pick-up and we loaded her up!

I left it in Calgary with Randy as he was going to meet us, with the scooter, back in Kelowna in a week's time. The plan was for me to ride it home from there.

More on that, next blog!